NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication
in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested
to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States,
Washington, D.C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in
order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to
press.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 94-325

CHANDRIS, INC., et al., PETITIONERS v. ANTONIOS
LATSIS

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the
second circuit

[June 14, 1995]

Justice O'Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.

In May 1989, respondent Antonios Latsis was employed by petitioner Chandris,
Inc., as a salaried superintendent engineer. Latsis was responsible for
maintaining and updating the electronic and communications equipment on
Chandris' fleet of vessels, which consisted of six passenger cruise ships.
Each ship in the Chandris fleet carried between 12 and 14 engineers who
were assigned permanently to that vessel. Latsis, on the other hand, was
one of two supervising engineers based at Chandris' Miami office; his duties
ran to the entire fleet and included not only overseeing the vessels' engineering
departments, which required him to take a number of voyages, but also planning
and directing ship maintenance from the shore. Latsis claimed at trial
that he spent 72 percent of his time at sea, App. 58; his immediate supervisor
testified that the appropriate figure was closer to 10 percent, id.,
at 180.

On May 14, 1989, Latsis sailed for Bermuda aboard the S. S. Galileo
to plan for an upcoming renovation of the ship, which was one of the older
vessels in the Chandris fleet. Latsis developed a problem with his right
eye on the day of departure, and he saw the ship's doctor as the Galileo
left port. The doctor diagnosed a suspected detached retina but failed
to follow standard medical procedure, which would have been to direct Latsis
to see an ophthalmologist on an emergency basis. Instead, the ship's doctor
recommended that Latsis relax until he could see an eye specialist when
the Galileo arrived in Bermuda two days later. No attempt was made
to transport Latsis ashore for prompt medical care by means of a pilot
vessel or helicopter during the 11 hours it took the ship to reach the
open sea from Baltimore, and Latsis received no further medical care until
after the ship arrived in Bermuda. In Bermuda, a doctor diagnosed a detached
retina and recommended immediate hospitalization and surgery. Although
the operation was a partial success, Latsis lost 75 percent of his vision
in his right eye.

Following his recuperation, which lasted approximately six weeks,
Latsis resumed his duties with Chandris. On September 30, 1989, he sailed
with the Galileo to Bremerhaven, Germany, where the vessel was placed
in drydock for a 6 month refurbishment. After the conversion, the company
renamed the vessel the S. S. Meridian. Latsis, who had been with
the ship the entire time it was in drydock in Bremerhaven, sailed back
to the United States on board the Meridian and continued to work
for Chandris until November 1990, when his employment was terminated for
reasons that are not clear from the record.

In October 1991, Latsis filed suit in the United States District
Court for the Southern District of New York seeking compensatory damages
under the Jones Act, 46 U. S. C. App. §688, for the negligence of
the ship's doctor that resulted in the significant loss of sight in Latsis'
right eye. The Jones Act provides, in pertinent part, that "[a]ny seaman
who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment may, at
his election, maintain an action for damages at law, with the right of
trial by jury . . . ." The District Court instructed the jury that it could
conclude that Latsis was a seaman within the meaning of the statute if
it found as follows:

"[T]he plaintiff was either permanently
assigned to the vessel or performed a substantial part of his work on the
vessel. In determining whether Mr. Latsis performed a substantial part
of his work on the vessel, you may not consider the period of time the
Galileo was in drydock in Germany, because during that time period she
was out of navigation. You may, however, consider the time spent sailing
to and from Germany for the conversion. Also, on this first element of
being a seaman, seamen do not include land-based workers." App. 210.

The parties stipulated to the District Court's second requirement for
Jones Act coverage--that Latsis' duties contributed to the accomplishment
of the missions of the Chandris vessels. Id., at 211. Latsis did
not object to the seaman status jury instructions in their entirety, but
only contested that portion of the charge which explicitly took from the
jury's consideration the period of time that the Galileo was in
drydock. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Chandris solely on the
issue of Latsis' status as a seaman under the Jones Act. Id., at
213.

Respondent appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
which vacated the judgment and remanded the case for a new trial. 20 F.
3d 45 (1994). The court emphasized that its longstanding test for seaman
status under the Jones Act required "`a more or less permanent connection
with the ship,'" Salgado v. M. J. Rudolph Corp., 514 F. 2d
750, 755 (CA2 1975), a connection that need not be limited to time spent
on the vessel but could also be established by the nature of the work performed.
The court thought that the alternate formulation employed by the District
Court (permanent assignment to the vessel or performance of a substantial
part of his work on the vessel), which was derived from Offshore Co.
v. Robison, 266 F. 2d 769, 779 (CA5 1959), improperly framed the
issue for the jury primarily, if not solely, in terms of Latsis' temporal
relationship to the vessel. With that understanding of what the language
of the Robison test implied, the court concluded that the District
Court's seaman status jury instructions constituted plain error under established
circuit precedent. The court then took this case as an opportunity to clarify
its seaman status requirements, directing the District Court that the jury
should be instructed on remand as follows:

"[T]he test of seaman status under
the Jones Act is an employment related connection to a vessel in navigation.
The test will be met where a jury finds that (1) the plaintiff contributed
to the function of or helped accomplish the mission of, a vessel; (2) the
plaintiff's contribution was limited to a particular vessel or identifiable
group of vessels; (3) the plaintiff's contribution was substantial in terms
of its (a) duration or (b) nature; and (4) the course of the plaintiff's
employment regularly exposed the plaintiff to the hazards of the sea."
20 F. 3d, at 57.

Elsewhere on the same page, however, the court phrased the third prong
as requiring a substantial connection in terms of both duration and
nature. Finally, the Court of Appeals held that the District Court erred
in instructing the jury that the time Latsis spent with the ship while
it was in drydock could not count in the substantial connection equation.
Id., at 55-56. Judge Kearse dissented, arguing that the drydock
instruction was not erroneous and that the remainder of the charge did
not constitute plain error. Id., at 58.

We granted certiorari, 513 U. S. ___ (1994), to resolve the continuing
conflict among the Courts of Appeals regarding the appropriate requirements
for seaman status under the Jones Act. [n.*]

The Jones Act provides a cause of action in negligence for "any seaman"
injured "in the course of his employment." 46 U. S. C. App. §688(a).
Under general maritime law prevailing prior to the statute's enactment,
seamen were entitled to "maintenance and cure" from their employer for
injuries incurred "in the service of the ship" and to recover damages from
the vessel's owner for "injuries received by seamen in consequence of the
unseaworthiness of the ship," but they were "not allowed to recover an
indemnity for the negligence of the master, or any member of the crew."
The Osceola, 189
U.S. 158, 175 (1903); see also Cortes v. Baltimore Insular
Line, Inc., 287
U.S. 367, 370-371 (1932). Congress enacted the Jones Act in 1920 to
remove the bar to suit for negligence articulated in The Osceola,
thereby completing the trilogy of heightened legal protections (unavailable
to other maritime workers) that seamen receive because of their exposure
to the "perils of the sea." See G. Gilmore & C. Black, Law of Admiralty,
§6-21, pp. 328-329 (2d ed. 1975); Robertson, A New Approach to Determining
Seaman Status, 64 Texas L. Rev. 79 (1985) (hereinafter Robertson). Justice
Story identified this animating purpose behind the legal regime governing
maritime injuries when he observed that seamen "are emphatically the wards
of the admiralty" because they "are by the peculiarity of their lives liable
to sudden sickness from change of climate, exposure to perils, and exhausting
labour." Harden v. Gordon, 11 F. Cas. 480, 485, 483 (No.
6,047) (CC Me. 1823). Similarly, we stated in Wilander that "[t]raditional
seamen's remedies . . . have been `universally recognized as . . . growing
out of the status of the seaman and his peculiar relationship to the vessel,
and as a feature of the maritime law compensating or offsetting the special
hazards and disadvantages to which they who go down to sea in ships are
subjected.' " 498 U. S., at 354 (quoting Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki,
328
U.S. 85, 104 (1946) (Stone, C. J., dissenting)).

The Jones Act, however, does not define the term "seaman" and
therefore leaves to the courts the determination of exactly which maritime
workers are entitled to admiralty's special protection. Early on, we concluded
that Congress intended the term to have its established meaning under the
general maritime law at the time the Jones Act was enacted. See Warner
v. Goltra, 293
U.S. 155, 159 (1934). In Warner, we stated that "a seaman is
a mariner of any degree, one who lives his life upon the sea." Id.,
at 157. Similarly, in Norton v. Warner Co., 321
U.S. 565, 572 (1944), we suggested that " `every one is entitled to
the privilege of a seaman who, like seamen, at all times contributes to
the labors about the operation and welfare of the ship when she is upon
a voyage' " (quoting The Buena Ventura, 243 F. 797, 799 (SDNY 1916)).

Congress provided some content for the Jones Act requirement in
1927 when it enacted the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act
(LHWCA), which provides scheduled compensation (and the exclusive remedy)
for injury to a broad range of land based maritime workers but which also
explicitly excludes from its coverage "a master or member of a crew of
any vessel." 44 Stat. (part 2) 1424, as amended, 33
U.S.C. § 902(3)(G). As the Court has stated on several occasions,
the Jones Act and the LHWCA are mutually exclusive compensation regimes:
" `master or member of a crew' is a refinement of the term `seaman' in
the Jones Act; it excludes from LHWCA coverage those properly covered under
the Jones Act." Wilander, 498 U. S., at 347. Indeed, "it is odd
but true that the key requirement for Jones Act coverage now appears in
another statute." Ibid. Injured workers who fall under neither category
may still recover under an applicable state workers' compensation scheme
or, in admiralty, under general maritime tort principles (which are admittedly
less generous than the Jones Act's protections). See Cheavens, Terminal
Workers' Injury and Death Claims, 64 Tulane L. Rev. 361, 364-365 (1989).

Despite the LHWCA language, drawing the distinction between those
maritime workers who should qualify as seamen and those who should not
has proved to be a difficult task and the source of much litigation--particularly
because "the myriad circumstances in which men go upon the water confront
courts not with discrete classes of maritime employees, but rather with
a spectrum ranging from the blue water seaman to the land based longshoreman."
Brown v. ITT Rayonier, Inc., 497 F. 2d 234, 236 (CA5 1974).
The federal courts have struggled over the years to articulate generally
applicable criteria to distinguish among the many varieties of maritime
workers, often developing detailed multi pronged tests for seaman status.
Since the 1950s, this Court largely has left definition of the Jones Act's
scope to the lower courts. Unfortunately, as a result, "[t]he perils of
the sea, which mariners suffer and shipowners insure against, have met
their match in the perils of judicial review." Gilmore & Black, supra,
§6-1, at 272. Or, as one court paraphrased Diderot in reference to
this body of law: "`We have made a labyrinth and got lost in it. We must
find our way out.'" Johnson v. John F. Beasley Constr. Co.,
742 F. 2d 1054, 1060 (CA7 1984), cert. denied, 469
U.S. 1211 (1985); see 9 Diderot, Oeuvres Complètes 203 (J. Assézat
ed. 1875).

In Wilander, decided in 1991, the Court attempted for the first
time in 33 years to clarify the definition of a "seaman" under the Jones
Act. Jon Wilander was injured while assigned as a foreman supervising the
sandblasting and painting of various fixtures and piping on oil drilling
platforms in the Persian Gulf. His employer claimed that he could not qualify
as a seaman because he did not aid in the navigation function of the vessels
on which he served. Emphasizing that the question presented was narrow,
we considered whether the term "seaman" is limited to only those maritime
workers who aid in a vessel's navigation.

After surveying the history of an "aid in navigation" requirement
under both the Jones Act and general maritime law, we concluded that "all
those with that `peculiar relationship to the vessel' are covered under
the Jones Act, regardless of the particular job they perform," 498 U. S.,
at 354, and that "the better rule is to define `master or member of a crew'
under the LHWCA, and therefore `seaman' under the Jones Act, solely in
terms of the employee's connection to a vessel in navigation," ibid.
Thus, we held that, although "[i]t is not necessary that a seaman aid in
navigation or contribute to the transportation of the vessel, . . . a seaman
must be doing the ship's work." Id., at 355. We explained that "[t]he
key to seaman status is employment related connection to a vessel in navigation,"
and that, although "[w]e are not called upon here to define this connection
in all details, . . . we believe the requirement that an employee's duties
must `contribut[e] to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment
of its mission' captures well an important requirement of seaman status."
Ibid.

Beyond dispensing with the "aid to navigation" requirement, however,
Wilander did not consider the requisite connection to a vessel in
any detail and therefore failed to end the prevailing confusion regarding
seaman status.

Respondent urges us to find our way out of the Jones Act "labyrinth"
by focusing on the seemingly activity based policy underlying the statute
(the protection of those who are exposed to the perils of the sea), and
to conclude that anyone working on board a vessel for the duration of a
"voyage" in furtherance of the vessel's mission has the necessary employment
related connection to qualify as a seaman. Brief for Respondent 12-17.
Such an approach, however, would run counter to our prior decisions and
our understanding of the remedial scheme Congress has established for injured
maritime workers. A brief survey of the Jones Act's tortured history makes
clear that we must reject the initial appeal of such a "voyage" test and
undertake the more difficult task of developing a status based standard
that, although it determines Jones Act coverage without regard to the precise
activity in which the worker is engaged at the time of the injury, nevertheless
best furthers the Jones Act's remedial goals.

Our Jones Act cases establish several basic principles regarding
the definition of a seaman. First, "[w]hether under the Jones Act or general
maritime law, seamen do not include land based workers." Wilander,
supra, at 348; see also Allbritton, Seaman Status in Wilander's
Wake, 68 Tulane L. Rev. 373, 387 (1994). Our early Jones Act decisions
had not recognized this fundamental distinction. In International Stevedoring
Co. v. Haverty, 272
U.S. 50 (1926), we held that a longshoreman injured while stowing cargo,
and while aboard but not employed by a vessel at dock in navigable waters,
was a seaman covered by the Jones Act. Recognizing that "for most purposes,
as the word is commonly used, stevedores are not `seamen,' " the Court
nevertheless concluded that "[w]e cannot believe that Congress willingly
would have allowed the protection to men engaged upon the same maritime
duties to vary with the accident of their being employed by a stevedore
rather than by the ship." Id., at 52. Because stevedores are engaged
in "a maritime service formerly rendered by the ship's crew," ibid.
(citing Atlantic Transport Co. of W.Va. v. Imbrovek, 234
U.S. 52, 62 (1914)), we concluded, they should receive the Jones Act's
protections. See also Uravic v. F. Jarka Co., 282
U.S. 234, 238 (1931); Jamison v. Encarnacion, 281
U.S. 635, 639 (1930). In 1946, the Court belatedly recognized that
Congress had acted, in passing the LHWCA in 1927, to undercut the Court's
reasoning in the Haverty line of cases and to emphasize that land
based maritime workers should not be entitled to the seamen's traditional
remedies. Our decision in Swanson v. Marra Brothers, Inc.,
328
U.S. 1, 7 (1946), acknowledged that Congress had expressed its intention
to "confine the benefits of the Jones Act to the members of the crew of
a vessel plying in navigable waters and to substitute for the right of
recovery recognized by the Haverty case only such rights to compensation
as are given by [the LHWCA]." See also South Chicago Coal & Dock
Co. v. Bassett, 309
U.S. 251, 257 (1940). Through the LHWCA, therefore, Congress "explicitly
den[ied] a right of recovery under the Jones Act to maritime workers not
members of a crew who are injured on board a vessel." Swanson, supra,
at 6. And this recognition process culminated in Wilander with the
Court's statement that, "[w]ith the passage of the LHWCA, Congress established
a clear distinction between land based and sea based maritime workers.
The latter, who owe their allegiance to a vessel and not solely to a land
based employer, are seamen." 498 U. S., at 347.

In addition to recognizing a fundamental distinction between land
based and sea based maritime employees, our cases also emphasize that Jones
Act coverage, like the jurisdiction of admiralty over causes of action
for maintenance and cure for injuries received in the course of a seamen's
employment, depends "not on the place where the injury is inflicted . .
. but on the nature of the seaman's service, his status as a member of
the vessel, and his relationship as such to the vessel and its operation
in navigable waters." Swanson, supra, at 4. Thus, maritime
workers who obtain seaman status do not lose that protection automatically
when on shore and may recover under the Jones Act whenever they are injured
in the service of a vessel, regardless of whether the injury occurs on
or off the ship. In O'Donnell v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock
Co., 318
U.S. 36 (1943), the Court held a shipowner liable for injuries caused
to a seaman by a fellow crew member while the former was on shore repairing
a conduit that was a part of the vessel and that was used for discharging
the ship's cargo. We explained: "The right of recovery in the Jones Act
is given to the seaman as such, and, as in the case of maintenance and
cure, the admiralty jurisdiction over the suit depends not on the place
where the injury is inflicted but on the nature of the service and its
relationship to the operation of the vessel plying in navigable waters."
Id., at 42-43. Similarly, the Court in Swanson emphasized
that the LHWCA "leaves unaffected the rights of members of the crew of
a vessel to recover under the Jones Act when injured while pursuing their
maritime employment whether on board . . . or on shore." 328 U. S., at
7-8. See also Braen v. Pfeiffer Transportation Co., 361
U.S. 129, 131-132 (1959).

Our LHWCA cases also recognize the converse: land based maritime
workers injured while on a vessel in navigation remain covered by the LHWCA,
which expressly provides compensation for injuries to certain workers engaged
in "maritime employment" that are incurred "upon the navigable waters of
the United States," 33
U.S.C. § 903(a). Thus, in Director, OWCP v. Perini North
River Associates, 459
U.S. 297 (1983), we held that a worker injured while "working on a
barge in actual navigable waters" of the Hudson River, id., at 300,
n. 4, could be compensated under the LHWCA, id., at 324. See also
Parker v. Motor Boat Sales, Inc., 314
U.S. 244, 244-245 (1941) (upholding LHWCA coverage for a worker testing
outboard motors who "was drowned when a motor boat in which he was riding
capsized"). These decisions, which reflect our longstanding view of the
LHWCA's scope, indicate that a maritime worker does not become a "member
of a crew" as soon as a vessel leaves the dock.

It is therefore well settled after decades of judicial interpretation
that the Jones Act inquiry is fundamentally status based: land based maritime
workers do not become seamen because they happen to be working on board
a vessel when they are injured, and seamen do not lose Jones Act protection
when the course of their service to a vessel takes them ashore. In spite
of this background, respondent and Justice Stevens suggest that any maritime
worker who is assigned to a vessel for the duration of a voyage--and whose
duties contribute to the vessel's mission--should be classified as a seaman
for purposes of injuries incurred during that voyage. See Brief for Respondent
14; post, at 1 (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment). Under
such a "voyage test," which relies principally upon this Court's statements
that the Jones Act was designed to protect maritime workers who are exposed
to the "special hazards" and "particular perils" characteristic of work
on vessels at sea, see, e.g., Wilander, supra, at
354, the worker's activities at the time of the injury would be controlling.

The difficulty with respondent's argument, as the foregoing discussion
makes clear, is that the LHWCA repudiated the Haverty line of cases
and established that a worker is no longer considered to be a seaman simply
because he is doing a seaman's work at the time of the injury. Seaman status
is not coextensive with seamen's risks. See, e.g., Easley
v. Southern Shipbuilding Corp., 965 F. 2d 1, 4-5 (CA5 1992), cert.
denied, 506 U. S. ___ (1993); Robertson 93 (following "the overwhelming
weight of authority in taking it as given that seaman status cannot be
established by any worker who fails to demonstrate that a significant portion
of his work was done aboard a vessel" and acknowledging that "[s]ome workers
who unmistakably confront the perils of the sea, often in extreme form,
are thereby left out of the seamen's protections" (footnote omitted)).
A "voyage test" would conflict with our prior understanding of the Jones
Act as fundamentally status based, granting the negligence cause of action
to those maritime workers who form the ship's company. Swanson,
supra, at 4-5; O'Donnell, supra, at 42-43.

Desper v. Starved Rock Ferry Co., 342
U.S. 187, 190 (1952), is not to the contrary. Although some language
in that case does suggest that whether an individual is a seaman depends
upon "the activity in which he was engaged at the time of injury," the
context of that discussion reveals that "activity" referred to the worker's
employment as a laborer on a vessel undergoing seasonal repairs while out
of navigation, and not to his precise task at the time of injury. Similarly,
despite Justice Harlan's suggestion in dissent that the Court's decision
in Grimes v. Raymond Concrete Pile Co. necessarily construed
the word seaman "to mean nothing more than a person injured while working
at sea," 356
U.S. 252, 255 (1958), our short per curiam opinion in that case does
not indicate that we adopted so expansive a reading of the statutory term.
Citing our prior cases which emphasized that the question of seaman status
is normally for the fact finder to decide, see, e.g., Senko
v. La Crosse Dredging Corp., 352
U.S. 370, 371-372 (1957); Bassett, supra, at 257-258,
we reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals and held simply that the
jury could have inferred from the facts presented that the petitioner was
a member of a crew in light of his overall service to the company (as the
District Court had concluded in ruling on a motion for a directed verdict
at the close of petitioner's case). Grimes, 356U. S., at 253. That
neither Desper nor Grimes altered our established course
in favor of a voyage test is confirmed by reference to our later decision
in Braen, 361 U. S., at 131, in which we repeated that "[t]he injured
party must of course have `status as a member of the vessel' for it is
seamen, not others who may work on the vessel (Swanson v. Marra
Bros., 328
U.S. 1, 4), to whom Congress extended the protection of the Jones Act."

We believe it is important to avoid " `engrafting upon the statutory
classification of a "seaman" a judicial gloss so protean, elusive, or arbitrary
as to permit a worker to walk into and out of coverage in the course of
his regular duties.' " Barrett v. Chevron, U. S.A., Inc.,
781 F. 2d 1067, 1075 (CA5 1986) (en banc) (quoting Longmire v. Sea
Drilling Corp., 610 F. 2d 1342, 1347, n. 6 (CA5 1980)). In evaluating
the employment related connection of a maritime worker to a vessel in navigation,
courts should not employ "a `snapshot' test for seaman status, inspecting
only the situation as it exists at the instant of injury; a more enduring
relationship is contemplated in the jurisprudence." Easley, supra,
at 5. Thus, a worker may not oscillate back and forth between Jones Act
coverage and other remedies depending on the activity in which the worker
was engaged while injured. Reeves v. Mobile Dredging & Pumping
Co., 26 F. 3d 1247, 1256 (CA3 1994). Unlike Justice Stevens, see post,
at 8, we do not believe that any maritime worker on a ship at sea as part
of his employment is automatically a member of the crew of the vessel within
the meaning of the statutory terms. Our rejection of the voyage test is
also consistent with the interests of employers and maritime workers alike
in being able to predict who will be covered by the Jones Act (and, perhaps
more importantly for purposes of the employers' workers' compensation obligations,
who will be covered by the LHWCA) before a particular work day begins.

To say that our cases have recognized a distinction between land
based and sea based maritime workers that precludes application of a voyage
test for seaman status, however, is not to say that a maritime employee
must work only on board a vessel to qualify as a seaman under the
Jones Act. In Southwest Marine, Inc. v. Gizoni, 502
U.S. 81 (1991), decided only a few months after Wilander, we
concluded that a worker's status as a ship repairman, one of the enumerated
occupations encompassed within the term "employee" under the LHWCA, 33
U.S.C. § 902(3), did not necessarily restrict the worker to a
remedy under that statute. We explained that, "[w]hile in some cases a
ship repairman may lack the requisite connection to a vessel in navigation
to qualify for seaman status, . . . not all ship repairmen lack the requisite
connection as a matter of law. This is so because `[i]t is not the employee's
particular job that is determinative, but the employee's connection to
a vessel.' " Gizoni, supra, at 89 (quoting Wilander,
498 U. S., at 354) (footnote omitted). Thus, we concluded, the Jones Act
remedy may be available to maritime workers who are employed by a shipyard
and who spend a portion of their time working on shore but spend the rest
of their time at sea.

Beyond these basic themes, which are sufficient to foreclose respondent's
principal argument, our cases are largely silent as to the precise relationship
a maritime worker must bear to a vessel in order to come within the Jones
Act's ambit. We have, until now, left to the lower federal courts the task
of developing appropriate criteria to distinguish the "ship's company"
from those members of the maritime community whose employment is essentially
land based.

The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit was apparently the first
to develop a generally applicable test for seaman status. In Carumbo
v. Cape Cod S. S. Co., 123 F. 2d 991 (CA1 1941), the court retained
the pre-Swanson view that "the word `seaman' under the Jones Act
did not mean the same thing as `member of a crew' under the [LHWCA]," id.,
at 994. It concluded that "one who does any sort of work aboard a ship
in navigation is a `seaman' within the meaning of the Jones Act." Id.,
at 995. The phrase "member of a crew," on the other hand, the court gave
a more restrictive meaning. The court adopted three elements to define
the phrase that had been used at various times in prior cases, holding
that "[t]he requirements that the ship be in navigation; that there be
a more or less permanent connection with the ship; and that the worker
be aboard primarily to aid in navigation appear to us to be the essential
and decisive elements of the definition of a `member of a crew.' " Ibid.
Cf. Senko, supra, at 375 (Harlan, J., dissenting) ("According
to past decisions, to be a `member of a crew' an individual must have some
connection, more or less permanent, with a ship and a ship's company").
Once it became clear that the phrase "master or member of a crew" from
the LHWCA is coextensive with the term "seaman" in the Jones Act, courts
accepted the Carumbo formulation of master or member of a crew in
the Jones Act context. See Boyd v. Ford Motor Co., 948 F.
2d 283 (CA6 1991); Estate of Wenzel v. Seaward Marine Services,
Inc., 709 F. 2d 1326, 1327 (CA9 1983); Whittington v. Sewer
Constr. Co., 541 F. 2d 427, 436 (CA4 1976); Griffith v. Wheeling
Pittsburgh Steel Corp., 521 F. 2d 31, 36 (CA3 1975), cert. denied,
423
U.S. 1054 (1976); McKie v. Diamond Marine Co., 204 F.
2d 132, 136 (CA5 1953). The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit initially
was among the jurisdictions to adopt the Carumbo formulation as
the basis of its seaman status inquiry, see Salgado v. M. J.
Rudolph Corp., 514 F. 2d, at 755, but that court took the instant case
as an opportunity to modify the traditional test somewhat (replacing the
"more or less permanent connection" prong with a requirement that the connection
be "substantial in terms of its (a) duration and (b) nature"), 20 F. 3d,
at 57.

The second major body of seaman status law developed in the Court
of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which has a substantial Jones Act caseload,
in the wake of Offshore Co. v. Robison, 266 F. 2d 769 (CA5
1959). At the time of his injury, Robison was an oil worker permanently
assigned to a drilling rig mounted on a barge in the Gulf of Mexico. In
sustaining the jury's award of damages to Robison under the Jones Act,
the court abandoned the aid in navigation requirement of the traditional
test and held as follows:

"[T]here is an evidentiary basis
for a Jones Act case to go to the jury: (1) if there is evidence that the
injured workman was assigned permanently to a vessel . . . or performed
a substantial part of his work on the vessel; and (2) if the capacity in
which he was employed or the duties which he performed contributed to the
function of the vessel or the accomplishment of its mission, or to the
operation or welfare of the vessel in terms of its maintenance during its
movement or during anchorage for its future trips." Id., at 779
(footnote omitted).

While the Carumbo and Robison approaches may not
seem all that different at first glance, subsequent developments in the
Fifth Circuit's Jones Act jurisprudence added a strictly temporal gloss
to the Jones Act inquiry. Under Barrett v. Chevron, U. S.A.,
Inc., supra, if an employee's regular duties require him to
divide his time between vessel and land, his status as a crew member is
determined "in the context of his entire employment" with his current employer.
Id., at 1075. See also Allbritton, 68 Tulane L. Rev., at 386; Longmire,
610 F. 2d, at 1347 (explaining that a worker's seaman status "should be
addressed with reference to the nature and location of his occupation taken
as a whole"). In Barrett, the court noted that the worker "performed
seventy to eighty percent of his work on platforms and no more than twenty
to thirty percent of his work on vessels" and then concluded that, "[b]ecause
he did not perform a substantial portion of his work aboard a vessel or
fleet of vessels, he failed to establish that he was a member of the crew
of a vessel." 781 F. 2d, at 1076. Since Barrett, the Fifth Circuit
consistently has analyzed the problem in terms of the percentage of work
performed on vessels for the employer in question--and has declined to
find seaman status where the employee spent less than 30 percent of his
time aboard ship. See, e.g., Palmer v. Fayard Moving &
Transp. Corp., 930 F. 2d 437, 439 (CA5 1991); Lormand v. Superior
Oil Co., 845 F. 2d 536, 541 (CA5 1987), cert. denied, 484
U.S. 1031 (1988); cf. Leonard v. Dixie Well Service &
Supply, Inc., 828 F. 2d 291, 295 (CA5 1987); Pickle v. International
Oilfield Divers, Inc., 791 F. 2d 1237, 1240 (CA5 1986), cert. denied,
479
U.S. 1059 (1987).

Although some courts of appeals have varied the applicable tests
to some degree, see, e.g., Johnson v. John F. Beasley
Constr. Co., 742 F. 2d, at 1062-1063, the traditional Carumbo
seaman status formulation and the subsequent Robison modification
are universally recognized, and one or the other is applied in every federal
circuit to have considered the issue. See Bull, Seaman Status Revisited:
A Practical Guide To Status Determination, 6 U. S. F. Mar. L.J. 547, 562-572
(1994) (collecting cases). The federal courts generally require at least
a significant connection to a vessel in navigation (or to an identifiable
fleet of vessels) for a maritime worker to qualify as a seaman under the
Jones Act. Although the traditional test requires a "more or less permanent
connection" and the Robison formulation calls for "substantial"
work aboard a vessel, "this general requirement varies little, if at all,
from one jurisdiction to another," id., at 587, and "[t]he courts
have repeatedly held that the relationship creating seaman status must
be substantial in point of time and work, and not merely sporadic," id.,
at 587-588.

From this background emerge the essential contours of the "employment
related connection to a vessel in navigation," Wilander, 498 U.
S., at 355, required for an employee to qualify as a seaman under the Jones
Act. We have said that, in giving effect to the term "seaman," our concern
must be "to define the meaning for the purpose of a particular statute"
and that its use in the Jones Act "must be read in the light of the mischief
to be corrected and the end to be attained." Warner, 293 U. S.,
at 158. Giving effect to those guiding principles, we think that the essential
requirements for seaman status are twofold. First, as we emphasized in
Wilander, "an employee's duties must `contribut[e] to the function
of the vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission.' " 498 U. S., at
355 (quoting Robison, 266 F. 2d, at 779). The Jones Act's protections,
like the other admiralty protections for seamen, only extend to those maritime
employees who do the ship's work. But this threshold requirement is very
broad: "[a]ll who work at sea in the service of a ship" are eligible
for seaman status. 498 U. S., at 354.

Second, and most important for our purposes here, a seaman must
have a connection to a vessel in navigation (or to an identifiable group
of such vessels) that is substantial in terms of both its duration and
its nature. The fundamental purpose of this substantial connection requirement
is to give full effect to the remedial scheme created by Congress and to
separate the sea based maritime employees who are entitled to Jones Act
protection from those land based workers who have only a transitory or
sporadic connection to a vessel in navigation, and therefore whose employment
does not regularly expose them to the perils of the sea. See 1B A. Jenner,
Benedict on Admiralty, §11a, pp. 2-10.1 to 2-11 (7th ed. 1994) ("If
it can be shown that the employee performed a significant part of his work
on board the vessel on which he was injured, with at least some degree
of regularity and continuity, the test for seaman status will be satisfied"
(footnote omitted)). This requirement therefore determines which maritime
employees in Wilander's broad category of persons eligible for seaman
status because they are "doing the ship's work," 498 U. S., at 355, are
in fact entitled to the benefits conferred upon seamen by the Jones Act
because they have the requisite employment related connection to a vessel
in navigation.

It is important to recall that the question of who is a "member
of a crew," and therefore who is a "seaman," is a mixed question of law
and fact. Because statutory terms are at issue, their interpretation is
a question of law and it is the court's duty to define the appropriate
standard. Wilander, 498 U. S., at 356. On the other hand, "[i]f
reasonable persons, applying the proper legal standard, could differ as
to whether the employee was a `member of a crew,' it is a question for
the jury." Ibid. See also Senko, 352 U. S., at 374 (explaining
that "the determination of whether an injured person was a `member of a
crew' is to be left to the finder of fact" and that "a jury's decision
is final if it has a reasonable basis"). The jury should be permitted,
when determining whether a maritime employee has the requisite employment
related connection to a vessel in navigation to qualify as a member of
the vessel's crew, to consider all relevant circumstances bearing on the
two elements outlined above.

In defining the prerequisites for Jones Act coverage, we think
it preferable to focus upon the essence of what it means to be a seaman
and to eschew the temptation to create detailed tests to effectuate the
congressional purpose, tests that tend to become ends in and of themselves.
The principal formulations employed by the Courts of Appeals--"more or
less permanent assignment" or "connection to a vessel that is substantial
in terms of its duration and nature"--are simply different ways of getting
at the same basic point: the Jones Act remedy is reserved for sea based
maritime employees whose work regularly exposes them to "the special hazards
and disadvantages to which they who go down to sea in ships are subjected."
Sieracki, 328 U. S., at 104 (Stone, C. J., dissenting). Indeed,
it is difficult to discern major substantive differences in the language
of the two phrases. In our view, "the total circumstances of an individual's
employment must be weighed to determine whether he had a sufficient relation
to the navigation of vessels and the perils attendant thereon." Wallace
v. Oceaneering Int'l, 727 F. 2d 427, 432 (CA5 1984). The duration
of a worker's connection to a vessel and the nature of the worker's activities,
taken together, determine whether a maritime employee is a seaman because
the ultimate inquiry is whether the worker in question is a member of the
vessel's crew or simply a land based employee who happens to be working
on the vessel at a given time.

Although we adopt the centerpiece of the formulation used by the
Court of Appeals in this case--that a seaman must have a connection with
a vessel in navigation that is substantial in both duration and nature--we
should point out how our understanding of the import of that language may
be different in some respects from that of the court below. The Court of
Appeals suggested that its test for seaman status "does not unequivocally
require a Jones Act seaman to be substantially connected to a vessel" in
terms of time if the worker performs important work on board on a steady,
although not necessarily on a temporally significant, basis. 20 F. 3d,
at 53. Perhaps giving effect to this intuition, or perhaps reacting to
the temporal gloss placed on the Robison language by later Fifth
Circuit decisions, the court phrased its standard at one point as requiring
a jury to find that a Jones Act plaintiff's contribution to the function
of the vessel was substantial in terms of its duration or nature.
Id., at 57. It is not clear which version ("duration or nature"
as opposed to "duration and nature") the Court of Appeals intended to adopt
for the substantial connection requirement--or indeed whether the court
saw a significant difference between the two. Nevertheless, we think it
is important that a seaman's connection to a vessel in fact be substantial
in both respects.

We agree with the Court of Appeals that seaman status is not merely
a temporal concept, but we also believe that it necessarily includes a
temporal element. A maritime worker who spends only a small fraction of
his working time on board a vessel is fundamentally land based and therefore
not a member of the vessel'screw, regardless of what his duties are. Naturally,
substantiality in this context is determined by reference to the period
covered by the Jones Act plaintiff's maritime employment, rather than by
some absolute measure. Generally, the Fifth Circuit seems to have identified
an appropriate rule of thumb for the ordinary case: a worker who spends
less than about 30 percent of his time in the service of a vessel in navigation
should not qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act. This figure of course
serves as no more than a guideline established by years of experience,
and departure from it will certainly be justified in appropriate cases.
As we have said, "[t]he inquiry into seaman status is of necessity fact
specific; it will depend on the nature of the vessel and the employee's
precise relation to it." Wilander, 498 U. S., at 356. Nevertheless,
we believe that courts, employers, and maritime workers can all benefit
from reference to these general principles. And where undisputed facts
reveal that a maritime worker has a clearly inadequate temporal connection
to vessels in navigation, the court may take the question from the jury
by granting summary judgment or a directed verdict. See, e.g., Palmer,
930 F. 2d, at 439.

On the other hand, we see no reason to limit the seaman status
inquiry, as petitioners contend, exclusively to an examination of the overall
course of a worker's service with a particular employer. Brief for Petitioners
14-15. When a maritime worker's basic assignment changes, his seaman status
may change as well. See Barrett, 781 F. 2d, at 1077 (Rubin, J.,
dissenting) ("An assignment to work as a crew member, like the voyage of
a vessel, may be brief, and the Robison test is applicable in deciding
the worker's status during any such employment"); Longmire, 610
F. 2d, at 1347, n. 6. For example, we can imagine situations in which someone
who had worked for years in an employer's shoreside headquarters is then
reassigned to a ship in a classic seaman's job that involves a regular
and continuous, rather than intermittent, commitment of the worker's labor
to the function of a vessel. Such a person should not be denied seaman
status if injured shortly after the reassignment, just as someone actually
transferred to a desk job in the company's office and injured in the hallway
should not be entitled to claim seaman status on the basis of prior service
at sea. If a maritime employee receives a new work assignment in which
his essential duties are changed, he is entitled to have the assessment
of the substantiality of his vessel related work made on the basis of his
activities in his new position. See Cheavens, 64 Tulane L. Rev., at 389-390.
Thus, nothing in our opinion forecloses Jones Act coverage, in appropriate
cases, for Justice Stevens' paradigmatic maritime worker injured while
reassigned to "a lengthy voyage on the high seas," post, at 10.
While our approach maintains the status based inquiry this Court's earlier
cases contemplate, we recognize that seaman status also should not be some
immutable characteristic that maritime workers who spend only a portion
of their time at sea can never attain.

One final issue remains for our determination: whether the District
Court erred in instructing the jurors that, "[i]n determining whether Mr.
Latsis performed a substantial part of his work on the vessel, [they could]
not consider the period of time the Galileo was in drydock in Germany,
because during that time period she was out of navigation." We agree with
the Court of Appeals that it did.

The foregoing discussion establishes that, to qualify as a seaman
under the Jones Act, a maritime employee must have a substantial employment
related connection to a vessel in navigation. See Wilander,
supra, at 354-355. Of course, any time Latsis spent with the Galileo
while the ship was out of navigation could not count as time spent at sea
for purposes of that inquiry, and it would have been appropriate for the
District Court to make this clear to the jury. Yet the underlying inquiry
whether a vessel is or is not "in navigation" for Jones Act purposes is
a fact intensive question that is normally for the jury and not the court
to decide. See Butler v. Whiteman, 356
U.S. 271 (1958) (per curiam); 2 M. Norris, Law of Seamen, §30.13,
p. 363 (4th ed. 1985) ("Whether the vessel is in navigation presents a
question of fact to be determined by the trier of the facts. When the case
is tried to a jury the fact question should be left to their consideration
if sufficient evidence has been presented to provide the basis for jury
consideration"). Removing the issue from the jury's consideration is only
appropriate where the facts and the law will reasonably support only one
conclusion, Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477
U.S. 242, 250-251 (1986), and the colloquy between the court and counsel
does not indicate that the District Court made any such findings before
overruling respondent's objection to the drydock instruction. See Tr. 432.
Based upon the record before us, we think the court failed adequately to
justify its decision to remove the question whether the Galileo
was "in navigation" while in Bremerhaven from the jury.

Under our precedent and the law prevailing in the circuits, it
is generally accepted that "a vessel does not cease to be a vessel when
she is not voyaging, but is at anchor, berthed, or at dockside," DiGiovanni
v. Traylor Bros., Inc., 959 F. 2d 1119, 1121 (CA1) (en banc), cert.
denied, 506 U. S. ___ (1992), even when the vessel is undergoing repairs.
See Butler, supra, at 271; Senko, 352 U. S., at 373;
Norris, supra, at 364 ("[A] vessel is in navigation . . . when it
returns from a voyage and is taken to a drydock or shipyard to undergo
repairs in preparation to making another trip, and likewise a vessel is
in navigation, although moored to a dock, if it remains in readiness for
another voyage" (footnotes omitted)). At some point, however, repairs become
sufficiently significant that the vessel can no longer be considered in
navigation. In West v. United States, 361
U.S. 118 (1959), we held that a shoreside worker was not entitled to
recover for unseaworthiness because the vessel on which he was injured
was undergoing an overhaul for the purpose of making her seaworthy and
therefore had been withdrawn from navigation. We explained that, in such
cases, "the focus should be upon the status of the ship, the pattern of
the repairs, and the extensive nature of the work contracted to be done."
Id., at 122. See also United New York & New Jersey Sandy
Hook Pilots Assn. v. Halecki, 358
U.S. 613 (1959); Desper, 342 U. S., at 191. The general rule
among the Courts of Appeals is that vessels undergoing repairs or spending
a relatively short period of time in drydock are still considered to be
"in navigation" whereas ships being transformed through "major" overhauls
or renovations are not. See Bull, 6 U. S. F. Mar. L. J., at 582-584 (collecting
cases).

Obviously, while the distinction at issue here is one of degree,
the prevailing view is that "major renovations can take a ship out of navigation,
even though its use before and after the work will be the same." McKinley
v. All Alaskan Seafoods, Inc., 980 F. 2d 567, 570 (CA9 1992). Our
review of the record in this case uncovered relatively little evidence
bearing on the Galileo's status during the repairs, and even less
discussion of the question by the District Court. On the one hand, the
work on the Chandris vessel took only about six months, which seems to
be a relatively short period of time for important repairs on oceangoing
vessels. Cf. id., at 571 (17 month long project involving major
structural changes took the vessel out of navigation); Wixom v.
Boland Marine & Manufacturing Co., 614 F. 2d 956 (CA5 1980)
(similar 3-year project); see also Senko, supra, at 373 (noting
that "[e]ven a transoceanic liner may be confined to berth for lengthy
periods, and while there the ship is kept in repair by its `crew' "--and
that "[t]here can be no doubt that a member of its crew would be covered
by the Jones Act during this period, even though the ship was never in
transit during his employment"). On the other hand, Latsis' own description
of the work performed suggests that the modifications to the vessel were
actually quite significant, including the removal of the ship's bottom
plates and propellers, the addition of bow thrusters, overhaul of the main
engines, reconstruction of the boilers, and renovations of the cabins and
other passenger areas of the ship. See App. 93-94. On these facts, which
are similar to those in McKinley, it is possible that Chandris could
be entitled to partial summary judgment or a directed verdict concerning
whether the Galileo remained in navigation while in drydock; the
record, however, contains no stipulations or findings by the District Court
to justify its conclusion that the modifications to the Galileo
were sufficiently extensive to remove the vessel from navigation as a matter
of law. On that basis, we agree with the Court of Appeals that the District
Court's drydock instruction was erroneous.

Even if the District Court had been justified in directing a verdict
on the question whether the Galileo remained in navigation while
in Bremerhaven, we think that the court's charge to the jury swept too
broadly. Instead of simply noting the appropriate legal conclusion and
instructing the jury not to consider the time Latsis spent with the vessel
in drydock as time spent with a vessel in navigation, the District
Court appears to have prohibited the jury from considering Latsis' stay
in Bremerhaven for any purpose. In our view, Latsis' activities
while the vessel was in drydock are at least marginally relevant to the
underlying inquiry (whether Latsis was a seaman and not a land based maritime
employee). Naturally, the jury would be free to draw several inferences
from Latsis' work during the conversion, not all of which would be in his
favor. But the choice among such permissible inferences should have been
left to the jury, and we think the District Court's broadly worded instruction
improperly deprived the jury of that opportunity by forbidding the consideration
of Latsis' time in Bremerhaven at all.

Under the Jones Act, "[i]f reasonable persons, applying the proper legal
standard, could differ as to whether the employee was a `member of a crew,'
it is a question for the jury." Wilander, 498 U. S., at 356. On
the facts of this case, given that essential points are in dispute, reasonable
factfinders could disagree as to whether Latsis was a seaman. Because the
question whether the Galileo remained "in navigation" while in drydock
should have been submitted to the jury, and because the decision on that
issue might affect the outcome of the ultimate seaman status inquiry, we
affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals remanding the case to the District
Court for a new trial.

On remand, the District Court should charge the jury in a manner
consistent with our holding that the "employment related connection to
a vessel in navigation" necessary to qualify as a seaman under the Jones
Act, id., at 355, comprises two basic elements: the worker's duties
must contribute to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment
of its mission, and the worker must have a connection to a vessel in navigation
(or an identifiable group of vessels) that is substantial in terms of both
its duration and its nature. As to the latter point, the court should emphasize
that the Jones Act was intended to protect sea based maritime workers,
who owe their allegiance to a vessel, and not land based employees, who
do not. By instructing juries in Jones Act cases accordingly, courts can
give proper effect to the remedial scheme Congress has created for injured
maritime workers.

It is so ordered.

Notes

* We
granted certiorari on the following question, set forth in the petition:
"What employment related connection to a vessel in navigation is necessary
for a maritime worker to qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act, 46
U.S.C. § 688?" Pet. for Cert. i. Petitioners argue for the first
time in their opening brief on the merits that, because respondent failed
to raise a timely objection under Rule 51 of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure, we should limit the scope of our review to the narrower issue
of whether the District Court's seaman status jury instructions constituted
"plain error." Brief for Petitioners 12-14. Under this Court's Rule 14.1(a),
"[o]nly the questions set forth in the petition [for certiorari], or fairly
included therein, will be considered by the Court," see, e.g., Berkemer
v. McCarty, 468
U.S. 420, 443, n. 38 (1984), and our Rule 24.1(a) provides that a merits
brief should not "raise additional questions or change the substance of
the questions already presented" in the petition. See also Izumi Seimitsu
Koygo Kabushiki Kaisha v. U. S. Philips Corp., 510 U. S. ___
(1993) (slip op., at 5-6); Taylor v. Freeland & Kronz,
503
U.S. 638, 645-646 (1992). Because petitioners did not raise the issue
in the petition for certiorari, we will not consider any argument they
may have under Rule 51 concerning the effect of respondent's failure to
object to the seaman status jury instructions in their entirety.